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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Welcome to the Ice Age

I'm serious, I'm calling BS on global warming.

I've been spending the day catching up on all that's been happening in southern cities such as Atlanta during this freak blizzard. For those of you that don't know, there are people that have been stuck in the worst traffic jam in American history for over sixteen hours. Some people are walking 5+ miles through the snow to get home, others are spending the night on the floor of grocery stores, kids are having to spend the night on buses/at school. There's one woman who delivered a baby in the traffic for goodness sake! I can't even begin to process how completely traumatic this is for so many people. If you want more details on this as well as some pretty surreal pictures, click here to read the article I did.

One of the pictures from the Article-people sleeping on the floor of CVS!

I do have a feeling that people up north are, when you get past how dire this situation is, laughing hysterically right now. I mean this all happened because of 2 inches of snow. It's not like people are getting buried in snowdrifts. But this is the South, and we don't get snow that often. Our cities aren't equipped for weather that happens every once in a blue moon. So when it does, the results can be disastrous.

A couple years ago a 5.9 magnitude Earthquake hit Richmond, and people lost their minds. I mean seriously, this thing made national headlines. I swear I still have PTSD from it-but in my defense I was 12 years old at my best friend's house and her parents weren't home. We panicked and ran half a mile barefoot to an apartment complex to get help. But regardless, while everyone in Richmond was screaming "The Apocalypse! It's upon us!" I'm sure everyone over on the west coast was sitting there, laughing and going "5.9? You sure it wasn't just a helicopter flying too low?"

But in all seriousness, if there's one good thing that came out of this it's that it showed the true compassion and kindness people have for each other in disasters like this. Opening up their homes and stores for people in need, driving complete strangers to safety, it warms my heart to know how much people look out for one another-and it makes me wish that we could reach out to people like this all the time.

Oh, also, there's another good thing that came out of this (for my city at least). Living in Richmond, we seemed to get the best bargain of all. If we lived any farther north, our city would be so used to winter weather that we wouldn't have been affected at all. If we lived farther south, well, you know by now what would have happened, and my school definitely doesn't seem like a fun place to spend the night. So for us, all we got is 2 weeks worth of snow days (with one day of school that hardly counted), oh and also our MIDTERMS WERE CANCELLED. What are the odds that this happens on the exact week that we were scheduled to take the hardest tests of the semester that also counted for 20% of our grade? Honestly I think it's safe to say that we're some of the luckiest people in the country right now.

This whole experience has been a bunch of mixed emotions, but I hope it teaches us to stick together even when there isn't a natural disaster. Generally be a good person all year round, and hopefully you'll be able to make a difference in people's lives.